This little ‘love from home’ family photo book has come in handy in so many situations. While I originally made it to help Miss G cope with heading back to Kuwait after a particularly lovely summer filled with family and friends, she’s held it close during all kinds of potentially difficult transition and separation periods – while I’ve been in Dubai for the weekend, while Brad’s been out of country for conferences, while missing her cousins back in home in Canada, while having troubles falling falling asleep, or after a bad dream – it’s provided her some comfort.

This time around our book was Freight Train by Donald Crews, a colourful book centred around the different types of train cars and their colours. The story follows the train through tunnels, by cities, over trestles, and eventually into the night where it disappears out of sight.

Oh my goodness… It feels like Gracen and I have been waiting for this week’s instalment of our preschool book clubforever! Shortly after sharing our magnetic polka dot sensory bag inspired by Press Here {one of our favourites}, Herve Tullet’s publicist contacted us and asked if we’d be interested in checking out his newest book, Mix It Up! Ummm.. YES?! {And stay tuned until the end of the post, because we’re also giving away a copy to one of our lovely readers!}

Not going to lie, this week’s preschool book club was a bit of a tough one… Tough because firstly, we couldn’t find the book anywhere. We visited bookshops, we visited grocery stores with book sections, we visited our school’s library, and we asked pretty much all of our friends. No book! Brad eventually scrounged up a digital version for us to see on the iPad, but after a friend suggested it this morning, I’m guessing that one of Kuwait’s many Instagram shops would have had it! I hadn’t thought of that. {Is this an around the world thing, or a Kuwait specific thing? Here you can order almost anything via Instagram and Whatsapp and have the items delivered to your door.} The second thing that made this week’s PBC challenging was that without the book physically in my hands, I had no inspiration. For the life of me, I couldn’t think of a fun activity to go with it. It was frustrating. Eventually though, I thought of something {a very simple math game focused on addition and subtraction} and it’s pretty awesome. Not awesome because it was crazy cool or unique, but awesome because Gracen did not want to stop playing. In fact, we played from about 9:00 to 10:45 a.m. yesterday morning. One round after the next – non-stop! I love when something that was initially challenging turns out so well.

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This week’s book club book, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen, is a book that Miss G and I both knew, but not one we absolutely loved previously. Well, that changed this week. As soon as we watched the video of Michael Rosen performing his story, we couldn’t get enough.

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This week of our preschool book club was a much anticipated one. Our book, Press Here by Hervé Tullet, has been a favourite of ours for a very long time due to its interactive nature, so we couldn’t wait to explore it further. If you’ve not read it before, each page requires the reader to complete an action of some sort before moving on to the next page to see what has happened to the dots {for example, ‘five quick taps on the yellow dot’ or ‘try shaking the book…just a little bit’}. Definitely a fun and unique book!

Now that we’ve been back in Kuwait for almost a week and the worst of our jet lag seems to be over with, Miss G and I have been enjoying getting back into our regular routine. Our days have been filled with fun outings, play dates with friends, and fun activities at home – including our first instalment of our second round of our awesome little preschool book club with some of our online friends!

Something I’ve wanted to start doing with Gracen for a long time now is fun hands-on activities based on our very favourite books. We looove reading and because we have a limited book collection and limited access to outside libraries here in Kuwait, our favourites get read over and over and over again. What I’m saying is – getting a little more out of them with a corresponding activity is a very good thing {and would be even if we had a huge home library}.